UK gives Openreach £289M for 4 rural broadband contracts in 'gigabit by 2030' push
- Reference: 1736247922
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2025/01/07/openreach_handed_289_million_in/
- Source link:
According to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology (DSIT), about 131,000 hard-to-reach homes and businesses are set to be able to access high-speed broadband as part of these four latest contracts, by which it means that their areas will get the plumbing in place ready for customers to sign up for services.
The latest tranche covers areas including North and Southwest Wales, Shropshire, Herefordshire, Devon, Somerset, Essex, North East England and Worcestershire, providing towns and villages in these locations with access to high-speed telecommunications.
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Project Gigabit was [2]launched back in 2021 under the previous government, since when dozens of contracts for rural infrastructure representing more than £2.2 billion ($2.76 billion) of investment have been signed, DSIT said.
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The department claims that over 85 percent of the country now has access to a gigabit connection – meaning the infrastructure is at least there – on the way to meeting the government's target of more-or-less complete gigabit coverage by 2030.
"With today's £289 million investment, we are not only boosting connectivity, but making it easier to access remote healthcare, online education, shopping online, work, learn, shop and stay in touch with loved ones," Technology Secretary Peter Kyle said.
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"We are determined to deliver the infrastructure this country needs to thrive, and I am thrilled to see so many homes and businesses in all areas of the country getting access to the fastest broadband speeds on the market through Project Gigabit."
These latest contracts add to the 96,600 premises already included under a UK government agreement signed last year with Openreach, the infrastructure arm of Britain's former state-owned telecoms monopoly BT, and are claimed to bring the total funding made available up to £800 million.
"Our new Full Fiber broadband network now reaches more than half of all properties in the UK, and we're confident we can reach as many as 30 million premises by the end of the decade, assuming the right regulatory and investment conditions exist," chirped Openreach CEO Clive Selley.
Why no altnets?
Openreach isn't the only network plumber in the country these days – other previous contracts were awarded to so-called alternative network (altnet) providers such as CityFibre, which picked up [6]£318 million in 2023 to build out infrastructure in parts of Norfolk, Suffolk and Hampshire.
We asked DSIT why all of these latest contracts have been awarded to BT's subsidiary, rather than being put out to competitive tender like the one just mentioned, but it failed to immediately respond.
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However, Mark Jackson, telecoms expert at [8]ISP Review told us the likely explanation is that earlier such awards which went to altnets were for Type A (smaller local build) or Type B (regional build) contracts.
By comparison, Type C contracts represent "cross-regional" builds, which are of a different scale. The idea behind these is to appoint a single supplier in areas where no market interest has been expressed before, and this is considered too expensive for smaller suppliers to tackle.
[9]Openreach pitches its tent as Ofcom preps review of broadband market rules
[10]The last mile's at risk in our hostile environment. Let’s go the extra mile to fix it
[11]Attacks on UK fiber networks mount: Operators beg govt to step in
[12]Progress towards 'Gigabit Europe' is slow, with UK also lagging
"The government could have taken an alternative approach, which would have involved opening all of those areas up to their gigabit voucher scheme. But that is very much demand-led by interest from individual properties and communities, which makes delivery less of a certainty," Jackson said.
Last year, Britain's other major telco, Virgin Media O2 (VMO2), said it was initiating plans to create a national fixed network company (NetCo) that would operate as an [13]alternative national infrastructure provider to Openreach , backed by its shareholders Liberty Global and Telefónica.
We understand this project remains on track, but it is likely to be some time before the company is ready to go to market as a direct rival with the clout to compete with Openreach in the wholesale sector. ®
Updated to add:
DSIT told us these contracts had been developed with Openreach under an agreement that was announced in August last year, adding that: "Across the programme, contracts are already being delivered by over 10 different suppliers – including several smaller, independent providers."
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[2] https://www.theregister.com/2021/03/19/uk_project_gigabit/
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[6] https://www.theregister.com/2023/07/03/cityfibre_318m_gigabit/
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[8] https://www.ispreview.co.uk/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2024/09/09/openreach_review_ofcom_prep/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/18/opinion_networks/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/12/uk_network_operators_want_government/
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2023/10/24/progress_towards_gigabit_europe_report/
[13] https://www.theregister.com/2024/02/19/virgin_media_product_to_rival_openreach/
[14] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
I agree. We've just had Nexfibre digging up our pavements who will apparently be opening up to wholesale at some point. But when it goes live it will initially be limited to Virgin Media O2.
What's that? No static IP for residential customers? No discrete ONT? No modem mode on the supplied router? Thanks but no thanks.
+1 for this
We have just had gigabit fibre from a non-BT supplier arrive in the area but asking some pointed questions (after being passed from pillar to post until I found a techie who mistakenly picked up the phone) I discovered that while static IP is possible, hosting your own server is not as the ports are all locked down. Not even the basic set of POP/IMAP/SMTP/HTTP is available for inbound and as for anything esoteric like a game server...
I do have a vaguely good enough connection from BT which I am now stuck with and interestingly they touted 'coming soon' for their Gigabit but are unable to advise which decade 'soon' falls into
Spot on
One operator wanted £5.00 per month for a static IP. Others were unresponsive when asked about running a server at home. Two said 'Not allowed by OFCOM' which is bollocks.
In the end I stayed with Plusnet and kept my old IP address (static). I even used my existing router (Draytek Vigor 2862 for the connection. Ok, limited to 500mBits but good.
OpenReach came and installed the Fibre from the pole across the road and connected it all up in 45 mins.
Overall, I am very satisfied with my setup. If I want to go to 1Gb then I'd need a new router.
I live on the edge of a small town, not close enough inside the town limits to be getting fibre to the home any time soon, and not rural enough to be a priority.
The FTTC we do get, is a pathetic 37Mb, which after years of getting 70Mb at my old house... feels antiquated.
I've seen them laying cables around the council houses less than a 1/4 mile away... we have no idea if/when they will get to us, but the new housing they've been building for the last few years behind my cul-de-sac is getting it installed with the new builds. We are literally sandwiched between both of those... 100-200yrds in either direction as the crow flies.
We've already lost the landline and everything has to be done over VOIP to save them money whilst making sure that in a power cut we lose the phone line entirely and have to rely on the very poor mobile signal around here.
The enshitification of everything continues to make life worse for people so profits can be increased.
I'm in a similar situation. Getting about 33Mbps due to being on the end of a very long wire. We were hoping to use the rural broadband voucher scheme but that has been pulled. The govt gigabit page for our county has a very low-res map of the planned govt funded rollout so we can't tell if we're in or not. The company that they've contracted with has no real info on their website either, just 'sign up for updates'.
"The FTTC we do get, is a pathetic 37Mb"
I have a friend who would be quite pleased with that or, indeed, anything reliable. Her house is across the valley from me, a mile or so closer to the exchange and yet on a long line to the same cabinet is my connection a couple of hundred metres or so from me. I doubt that scattering of houses will be on the list for this project even if "North East" were to stretch so far. As ever we're seeing a lucky* few get fibre while those who would be happy with a decent FTTC service get nowt.
* Personally I don't consider myself particularly lucky in having the option of FTTP. I have a satisfactory connection on FTTC.
"I have a satisfactory connection on FTTC"
This. I don't need gigabit. Faster than my current 33Mbps would be nice but actually I'd be perfectly content with just having a better contention ratio. There are times when my throughput drops to <1Mbps and its not the copper at fault.
Also in a similar situation here.
On a street built in the early 70's with little to no ducting to the houses, so Openreach made FTTP available to all the surrounding streets and roads but have left us out.
Because I'm a long way from the cabinet I'm only getting around 28Mbps on FTTC.
A few months ago I thought the perfect solution had come along - BRSK were going to install their own fibre network and I'd already pre-ordered their 2Gbps package and I was ecstatic!
Then when they turned up with some telegraph poles some of my elderly neighbours kicked up a stink, and supported by local councillors managed to get BRSK to pull out of installing on our street. I was heartbroken, as it would have made such a difference.
So I’m now in a situation where all the surrounding area has an option of either FTTP through the Openreach network or through BRSK, and we’re left with a badly degraded FTTC service.
33? would love that
we get 14 tops here, nearly 3 miles from exchange and its bloody unreliable. The only solution for any decent speed is Starlink.
Fibre is always 'next year'
>a pathetic 37Mb
You're lucky!
We celebrated when we could use a telephone with a 55 bps acoustic coupler. /And/ we had to write each bit on a tiny piece of paper and send it to the data building by carrier pigeon.
We've already lost the landline and everything has to be done over VOIP to save them money whilst making sure that in a power cut we lose the phone line entirely and have to rely on the very poor mobile signal around here.
That's not entirely correct and somewhat disingenuous. The problem with the old (soon to be discontinued) voice service is that it's getting harder and harder to find anyone willing to make the kit or spare parts for it. Anyone who does is charging an arm and a leg for the privilege. Hardly anyone uses a landline these days, those that do are probably using DECT units that are reliant on power and in any case power cuts of any significance are so few and far between that it doesn't really matter.
That sucks if you're a 90 year old living in a remote cottage relying on two miles of pole supported, tree threatened, copper for your phone using a Bakelite handset but for everyone else it's all very 'meh'.
For decades now BT has been maintaining a VoIP service hidden from customer sight behind AD/DA converters in the exchange. It is a technically archaic solution and the time has come to do away with the duplication and decrepit equipment just shift everything onto IP.
Sort of similar here.
I'm sure I've posted about this in the past.
We're about 4 miles from the nearest old-style phone exchanges, so our regular BT connection would be about 2mbps (if we had taken out the connection*). However, there's an OpenReach fibre exchange less than 50 yards from the house. But, with only 4 residential buildings within the postcode, we're right at the bottom of OpenReach's todo list.
* When asking the BT customer service representative what we could do to improve that, his response was "Move".
Instead we added an EE 4G account and a TP-Link 4G modem and get something like 50-80Mbps down and at least 20 -30 up: fast enough for MS Teams and video streaming. Luckily there's a mast just the other side of the field out back. :)
Fuck me how much !!
“Contracts with BT Group's Openreach worth upwards of £289 million ($363 million) for the further build-out of fiber infrastructure to serve more rural areas as part of Project Gigabit.
According to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology (DSIT), about 131,000 hard to reach”
£289m/131000 is £2,200 a pop. I did the maths twice as I didn’t believe it.
Isn’t Rachel Reeves warring down on Government waste??
Re: Fuck me how much !!
So the government is not even covering the full ~£8000 per property it costs to install fibre.
Re: Fuck me how much !!
Up to surely.
Stick fibre in to a a community mesh/5G and far less digging needed. It would also help with Mobile Deadspots esp. with 3G being ditched (if you fortunate enough to even get that and not 2G/EDGE).
You don’t need to dig/hang a mile of fibre up a sheep farm track if you can get mobile signal there from a small 5G femtocell.
Re: Fuck me how much !!
The radio spectrum is limited in size by the laws of physics, we shouldn't waste frequencies on things that can be served via alternative means such as fibre.
UK taxpayer gives Openreach £289M
Surely.
How about FTTP for urbal locations, OpenReach?
I live in a London Postcode, but BT can't get me FTTP. Not only that but they can't even give my a date by which they will be able to give me FTTP. They did have a date, that was over a year ago. Now they can't even give me a date when they can start planning to give me a date.
I have FTTC and I get 60+ meg. I can literally see the cabinet from my window.
But the new pub I spoke to that is closer to the exchange than me has been told that it can have only 14.4. So, no public wifi in the pub then.
I don't care who builds the network so long as they are all obliged to offer wholesale access so that I can stick with A&A.